Sports Opinion by Tater
Topics: Baseball Salary Cap
Major League Baseball needs a salary cap.
Plain and simple. Players are getting paid to much and the current
system is managed by the owners. Those owners with deep pockets are
going to spend, spend, spend and ignore the system. Those owners
with shallow pockets will not be able to compete and must spend or
their fans will abandon them. They must be extremely careful with
their purchases and anything of quality is WAY out of their price range.
It used to be a joke that a single player was making more than the oppositions
entire payroll. Now there are at least 7 players that will make more
than the Montreal Expos, maybe even more than that. The current revenue
sharing system is supposed to prevent that. It taxes the 5 highest
payrolls and gives the tax to the small market franchises. What it
really does is NOTHING. The current system is worse than the previous
system, but not by much. For that matter the current system is the
old system, with a feature. Let's look at this feature.
The "tax" plan.
The tax plan is supposed to punish the 5 teams with
the highest salaries and the 5 lowest teams are supposed to get the "tax"
that was imposed on the 5 highest. First time the plan officially
failed, April 1997. Several teams held off giving hefty contract
extensions to certain players until the "tax" deadline was past.
Of the top 5 in payroll at the end of the year only 3 had to pay the tax,
because the other 2 that were in the top 5 at the deadline fell out of
the top 5 soon afterwards. The bottom 5 all got there money but it
had NO effect. If you tax a team with a payroll of $76 million
5%, it comes out to $3.8 million. Do you think they will notice if
they have to pay $4 million more? What does $3.8 million do
for a team in the bottom 5 teams. A couple of MARGINAL players, originally.
Now $3.8 million will get you some bum that either can't throw, catch or
hit. It will get you a number 5 starter or a utility fielder.
Jose Offerman got $6 million a year. Offerman has one skill, he can
hit. His throwing arm is like a shotgun, you don't know where the
ball is going but it is going in the general direction of the target.
His glove has holes that make Swiss cheese jealous. He got $6 million
a year. Montreal Expos, news flash that new stadium won't help you
do anything but put off the inevitable, the welcome mat is being placed
in North Virginia, Carolina, and all points South.
Now we shall look at a feature of the old systems.
Arbitration
Why does this exist? Both a player and a team
is willing to turn to a third party to determine the fair market value
of the players services. News flash, your fair market value is determined
by the amount of money that a team is willing to spend on you. Arbitration
just creates problems between the player and the team. Both party's
go into the meeting to tell why they should get the amount that they proposed.
The team says he is not that good of a player, his bat's weak, he's hurt
to much, etc. The player says I was ranked number 1 in Hit by pitch
for the month of April or some other obscure statistic and the arbitrator
makes a decision. If I was the arbitrator I would rule for the team
all the time unless the team's bid was ridiculously low. Does arbitration
have positives? Sure, players don't hold out forever demanding money
that no one is willing to give them. If you are worth that much then
a team other than your team would sign you. You are a Restricted
Free Agent. Meaning your team has the right to match any offer you
receive. Besides this only creates bad feelings between the team
and the player. The Team if it loses trades you and/or insults you
in the press, and the player if he wins demands more money later to stay
stating, "they don't love me." or some crap like that.
Ridiculous. Both features are ridiculous.
The "Tax" plan does not work, and Arbitration really if you look at what
it requests does not make sense. What do I suggest? Well
here it is.
Solution
Here is what I suggest first scrap the tax.
It doesn't work and to those groups that only care about winning it means
a fee to them so they can win. Put in a hard salary cap. Also
place a minimum salary cap. I think $55 million for the high and
$40 million for the low should fit. This would cause small market
teams to spend money but it would put a better product on the field and
it would get more fans in the stands. Fine the teams over the cap
and give the fine to the revenue sharing and a portion of the revenue sharing
pot goes to charity, something like 20%. This will keep teams from
living out of the revenue sharing pot because the money isn't completely
there for them. At the end of the year the pot should be emptied
someplace, like charity. The fine, for going over the cap, should
be substantial, something like $1 million dollars for EVERY $1 million
dollars over the cap. If you have a $76 million dollar payroll an
extra $22 million dollars will put a major dent into your pocket.
It would raise what you pay to $98 million, of that only $76 million would
be paid for your talent. It makes a GM think before he spends $10
million for a pitcher that is slightly above average. The minimum
salary level will be enforced 2 years after the plan is in service.
You can enforce this by informing a team it gets no revenue from the revenue
sharing plan while it is below the minimum. Dump Arbitration.
It only creates bad feelings between teams and players.
Nothing is need to replace it. If there is difference let the player
hold out, or let the team raise its price. OPEN BIDDING!!!
That is what the Fair Value System is based on. That is Capitalism.
Of course seeing that Baseball lost it's anti-trust exemption and that
the Player's Association will NEVER accept a deal like this, it will NEVER
happen. The players want "their" money. Small Market teams
be damned. Everyone wants a winner. As the 21st Century closes
in the only teams that will win will be the teams owned by corporations
and have an average salary per player of like $4 million. This spring
I can honestly say that MLB has two leagues. The big spenders and
the small spenders. 20 of the 30 teams are all but mathematically
eliminated from the playoffs. The Braves had the best pitching staff
in baseball, before Arizona bought theirs. Atlanta developed their
staff from youth traded for a few parts and used that staff to become a
power house in MLB. Arizona bought theirs off the free agent market
for $40 million, or five times the payroll of Montreal at the end of last
year. The salary scale will have 8 teams, minimum, over $65 million,
8 teams between $60 and $40 million, 4 teams between $40 and $25
million, and 10 under $25 million. Of course I am only guessing,
seeing how official numbers won't be available until April. Notice
the gap between $65 and $60 million, it really does exist. That's
the gap between playoff bound teams and the rest of the league.
S.O.S. Major League Baseball Going down!!!!!!!!!!
As will some of the franchises, down the path of ineptitude. Win
records will be broken, so will loss records.
D.A. Tater
The opinion of this rant is mine and mine alone.
Anyone mentioned in the rant is mentioned at my discretion. This rant will
be updated an changed when I feel like it. All past rants can be found
on the previous page.
Problems with my opinion. Email me at datater@oocities.com
and maybe we can have an email discussion about your problems with
my rant.
Back to My Rant's Page